"It is not enough to have a good mind; it is more important to use it well" Rene Descartes was a central figure in the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. In his Discourse on Method he outlined the contrast between mathematics and experimental sciences, and the extent to which each one can achieve certainty. Drawing on his own work in geometry, optics, astronomy and physiology, Descartes developed the hypothetical method that characterizes modern science, and this soon came to replace the traditional techniques derived from Aristotle. Many of Descartes most...
"It is not enough to have a good mind; it is more important to use it well" Rene Descartes was a central figure in the scientific revolutio...
Juvenal's Satires create a fascinating (and immediately familiar) world of whores, fortune-tellers, boozy politicians, slick lawyers, shameless sycophants, ageing flirts and downtrodden teachers Perhaps more than any other writer, Juvenal (c. 55-138 AD) captures the splendour, the squalor and the sheer vibrant energy of everyday Roman life. A member of the traditional land-owning class which was rapidly seeing power slip into the hands of dynamic outsiders, he offers equally savage portraits of decadent aristocrats; women interested only in 'rough trade' like actors and...
Juvenal's Satires create a fascinating (and immediately familiar) world of whores, fortune-tellers, boozy politicians, slick lawyers, shamel...
Schiller was profoundly shaken by the failure of the French Revolution and devoted many of his greatest works to debating the true nature of freedom. Here, in scenes alternating between the palace of Westminster and the prison at Fotheringhay, he shows us a captive heroine rising above her suffering to gain in insight and spiritual depth. The deceitful and indecisive Elizabeth, trapped by the cruel demands of Realpolitik, can achieve worldly victory only at a terrible moral cost.
Schiller's early plays are full of violent actions and language, but he later adopted a far more restrained and...
Schiller was profoundly shaken by the failure of the French Revolution and devoted many of his greatest works to debating the true nature of freedom. ...
Benvenuto Cellini was a celebrated Renaissance sculptor and goldsmith - a passionate craftsman who was admired and resented by the most powerful political and artistic personalities in sixteenth-century Florence, Rome and Paris. He was also a murderer and a braggart, a shameless adventurer who at different times experienced both papal persecution and imprisonment, and the adulation of the royal court. Inn-keepers and prostitutes, kings and cardinals, artists and soldiers rub shoulders in the pages of his notorious autobiography: a vivid portrait of the manners and morals of both the rulers of...
Benvenuto Cellini was a celebrated Renaissance sculptor and goldsmith - a passionate craftsman who was admired and resented by the most powerful polit...
This major source of Chinese mythology (third century BC to second century AD) contains a treasure trove of rare data and colorful fiction about the mythical figures, rituals, medicine, natural history, and ethnic peoples of the ancient world. The Classic of Mountains and Seas explores 204 mythical figures such as the gods Foremost, Fond Care, and Yellow, and goddesses Queen Mother of the West and Girl Lovely, as well as many other figures unknown outside this text. This eclectic Classic also contains crucial information on early medicine (with cures for impotence and...
This major source of Chinese mythology (third century BC to second century AD) contains a treasure trove of rare data and colorful fiction about the m...
This volume of Moliere's dramatic commentaries on society presents The Miser, a misguided hero who obsessively disrupts the lives of those around him. The School for Wives is newly translated for this edition and was fiercely denounced as impious and vulgar. Moliere's response to his detractors became The School for Wives Criticized. Even more alarming to critics was his version of Don Juan. In The Hypochondriac, he produced an outrageous expose of medicine. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the...
This volume of Moliere's dramatic commentaries on society presents The Miser, a misguided hero who obsessively disrupts the lives of those arou...
Sunjata Keita was the founder of one of the greatest empires of Western Africa. These two epic accounts of his life portray a greedy, slow-witted child - said to have crawled until the age of seven - who grew up as prophecy foretold to become a mighty warrior, renowned for his bravery and superhuman strength. They describe how, with the help of his sister, who seduced their arch-enemy Sumanguru into revealing his secret powers, Sunjata defeated the Susu overlords and created the Mali Empire which would last for two centuries. Based on events from the early thirteenth century, these tales of...
Sunjata Keita was the founder of one of the greatest empires of Western Africa. These two epic accounts of his life portray a greedy, slow-witted chil...
The stories of Giovanni Verga (1840-1922) are wonderful evocations of ordinary Italian life, focusing in particular on his native, Sicily. In an original and dynamic prose style, he portrays such eternal human themes as love, honour and adultery with rich and colourful language.
The stories of Giovanni Verga (1840-1922) are wonderful evocations of ordinary Italian life, focusing in particular on his native, Sicily. In an origi...
Warrior-prince Rama is about to be crowned Young King, when he hears the devastating news that his father, King of Ayodhya, has been tricked into banishing him to the forest. His devoted wife Sita insists on accompanying him in exile, but the evil ten-headed lord Ravana has fallen deeply in love with the beautiful princess and steals her away. Aided by Hanuman, mighty captain of the monkeys, Rama sets out across the world to find her and destroy Ravana in a deadly battle. Rama the Steadfast was composed in the oral tradition in about the fifth century BC and has been retold over the...
Warrior-prince Rama is about to be crowned Young King, when he hears the devastating news that his father, King of Ayodhya, has been tricked into bani...
A freed slave's daring assertion of the evils of slavery Born in present-day Ghana, Quobna Ottobah Cugoano was kidnapped at the age of thirteen and sold into slavery by his fellow Africans in 1770; he worked in the brutal plantation chain gangs of the West Indies before being freed in England. His Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery is the most direct criticism of slavery by a writer of African descent. Cugoano refutes pro-slavery arguments of the day, including slavery's supposed divine sanction; the belief that Africans gladly sold their own families into...
A freed slave's daring assertion of the evils of slavery Born in present-day Ghana, Quobna Ottobah Cugoano was kidnapped at the age of thir...
